This invention relates generally to social networking systems, and in particular to presenting actions performed by users within a social networking system via a ticker interface.
A social networking system typically has access to large amounts of social information describing actions performed by users that may be of interest to other social networking system users. A user is likely to be interested in being notified of actions performed by other users connected to the user in the social networking system. Examples of actions include: photo uploads, status updates, transactions, wall posts, comments, recommendations, and likes of other users' photos, videos, and the like. The social networking system stores other types of information that is likely to be of interest to a user, for example, activities related to social groups or events represented in the social networking system.
Commonly, a social networking system notifies a user of actions performed by other users using news stories, or “stories,” describing an action performed and a user performing the action. While a social networking system often selects news stories for presentation to a user based on various factors indicting the user's likely interest in an action and/or a user associated with a story, inaccuracies may arise in the story selection. However, notifying a user of each action performed by other users connected to the user may result in the display of stories describing actions performed by a small number of users or describing a small number of types of actions. For instance, if a user successively establishes connections to other users, a real-time display of stories to an additional user connected to the user may predominantly include stories describing the connections made by the user, which may not be relevant to the additional user. Further, displaying stories to a user in real-time may result in the user receiving an increased amount of content that is less relevant to the user.